5 d. ago EU steps up crisis planning and advises people to stockpile 72 hours of supplies – Europe live

The EU has announced its Preparedness Union Strategy, outlining plans to prevent and respond to new crises and threatsMeanwhile, Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson has confirmed the country plans to increase the country’s defence spending to a provisional target of 3.5% of GDP by 2030 in the largest push since the end of cold war.Sweden was expected to spend 2.14% in 2024, with projections reaching 2.4% this year, and 2.6% in 2028.Let’s not forget that Russia is and remains the most significant and dark threat to our alliance. Let’s not forget that Russia is moving into a wartime economy. And that will have a huge impact on their capacity and capability to build their armed forces.When it comes to the defence of Poland and the general defence of Nato territory, if anyone were to miscalculate and think they can get away with an attack on Poland or on any other ally, they will be met with the full force of this fierce alliance. Our reaction will be devastating.This has to be very ...

Events

5 d. ago The Cold War 'peace offering' that did nothing to stop world being left on brink of nuclear Armageddon

The ornate double barrel weapon was one of two handed over by the Russian dictator during his unprecedented state visit to America in September 1959

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5 d. ago Cold war chronicler: Thomas Billhardt’s East Germany – in pictures

The photojournalist, who died in January, captured daily life in East Germany as well as Castro and Gorbachev’s visits, the fall of the Berlin Wall and life in Vietnam during the war Continue reading...

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6 d. ago Inside eerie British 'town' abandoned for years after 12,000 inhabitants left

The town was built by the British government at the height of the Cold War and housed thousands of servicemen and women – but now it stands completely deserted

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6 d. ago In defiance of Donald Trump, is a European ‘security council’ emerging? | Paul Taylor

With the US threatening unilateral withdrawal, even from the top Nato military post, five European nations must fill the vacuumIn the face of Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine and Donald Trump’s destabilisation of the Atlantic alliance, an embryonic European security council is taking shape on the hoof. Whether it will prove strong enough to protect Europe’s liberal democracies and deter Russia without US military support may be tested all too soon.Nato was created under US leadership to keep the Soviet Union at bay while suppressing centuries-old rivalries among European powers. The alliance stayed united through the cold war and attracted new central European members after communist rule collapsed. But the spectre of US disengagement now threatens to leave Europe without its nuclear-armed protector.Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre Continue reading...

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9 d. ago Oleg Gordievsky, Britain's most valuable Cold War spy inside the KGB, dies at 86

Former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky has died aged 86 in England

Events

9 d. ago Czech Republic to rescue Radio Free Europe after Trump funding cuts

Prime Minister Petr Fiala says his government will step in to keep cold war-era broadcaster going

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1 week ago Former KGB double agent Oleg Gordievsky dies in Surrey aged 86

Soviet spy defected to Britain from Moscow under threat of exposure after supplying information to MI6 and MI5Oleg Gordievsky obituaryOleg Gordievsky, the UK’s most significant cold war double agent inside the KGB, has died at his home in Surrey aged 86.Gordievsky, who would eventually defect to Britain from Moscow under threat of exposure, was considered a key agent operating for the UK’s intelligence services working within the Soviet Union. Continue reading...

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1 week ago Exiled Russian journalists left ‘high and dry’ after US cuts radio funding

Journalists working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty at risk of being stranded without legal status after Trump administration decisionExiled Russian journalists are being left “high and dry” and at risk of being stranded overseas without any legal status after the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw funding from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).The Guardian understands that some Russian journalists working for RFE/RL, which was founded during the cold war and broadcasts to countries including Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, will face imminent problems over their legal status should the broadcaster shut down. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Newly released JFK assassination files reveal more about CIA but don't yet point to conspiracies

Newly released documents related to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 are giving curious readers more details Wednesday into Cold War-era covert U.S. operations in other nations but didn’t initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK

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1 week ago Crimea has been a battleground and a playground. Why it's coveted by both Russia and Ukraine

Russia’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine exactly 11 years ago on March 18, 2014, was quick and bloodless, but it sent Moscow’s relations with the West into a downward spiral unseen since the Cold War

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1 week ago The underground Cold War nuclear bunker in Scotland being used by Army regiments due to Russian threat

Army regiments have applied to train in the Cold War nuclear bunker

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2 w. ago EU’s foreign policy chief laments US funding cuts to Radio Free Europe

Kaja Kallas says the bloc cannot automatically fill the gap left by the USThe EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, expressed disappointment over US funding cuts to Radio Free Europe and said the EU could not automatically fill the gap.The US Agency for Global Media stopped grants over the weekend to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which was founded during the cold war and broadcasts to 23 countries, including Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Iran and Afghanistan. Continue reading...

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2 w. ago Nuked Blood: Minister considers mass declassification of secret papers

Campaigners are seeking the release of records about the medical monitoring of troops during radiation experiments in the Cold War, after minister admits reviewing them is a "gargantuan" task

Politics

2 w. ago Chilling warning that threat of Russian missile attack on UK 'most stark since Cold War'

A bombshell new report from a UK-based thinktank has warned the country is barely able to protect its own military sites from Russian missiles, let alone major cities

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2 w. ago Threat of Russian missile attack on Britain is 'highest since Cold War' with fleet of Putin's rocket

Vladimir Putin 's fleet of rocket-laden submarines and warships off the coast of Norway are posing an acute threat to the UK, a study by a think tank called the Council on Geostrategy has found.

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2 w. ago China can live with Trump’s tariffs – his bullish foreign policy will help Beijing in the long term | Steve Tsang

By turning his back on US allies and global institutions, Trump will help Xi Jinping advance his plan for a China-centric worldIs Donald Trump China’s worst nightmare or a dream come true? He is both, but not in equal measure. In the near-term, his tariff-led approach to trade will cause problems for Beijing. However, in just a few weeks he has done more damage to the liberal international order, the cohesion of the democratic west, and the US’s global standing, than all the combined efforts to undermine them in the entirety of the cold war. This goes beyond the wildest dreams China’s leaders could have had.The tariffs already levied are serious enough, and Beijing cannot but see them as a harbinger of more to come. Unlike during his first term, this time Trump seems prepared to deliver the threats he makes. With China’s economy already misfiring, an intensified trade war is the last thing Beijing needs, despite the bravado of its diplomats.Steve Tsang is director of the China Insti...

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2 w. ago From the archive: The end of Atlanticism: has Trump killed the ideology that won the cold war? – podcast

We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.This week, from 2018: The foreign policy establishment has been lamenting its death for half a century. But Atlanticism has long been a convenient mythBy Madeleine Schwartz. Read by Kelly Burke Continue reading...

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3 w. ago Trump dreams of a Maga empire – but he’s more likely to leave us a nuclear hellscape | Alexander Hurst

The US president’s new imperialism could make real the apocalyptic world depicted by cold war filmmakersIn 1965, the British government blocked the BBC from broadcasting The War Game, a pseudo-documentary film it had commissioned depicting just what a nuclear attack on the UK would entail. The film, the government judged, was simply too “horrifying” for the public. Two decades after that, The War Game finally aired, prior to the release of the 1984 film Threads, which, in imagining the aftermath of a nuclear attack on the UK, was the first movie to deal with the scientific reality of nuclear winter.When I was 11, I had nightmares for a few weeks after seeing a trailer for a nuclear doomsday film (The Sum of All Fears) that ran prior to a cinema screening of The Fellowship of the Ring (I had just read the three Lord of the Rings volumes). The Nazgûl were disturbing, of course, but they were not of the real world, unlike nukes. This January, I was confronted with The War Game at an ex...

Politics

3 w. ago Elissa Slotkin focuses on economy and national security in Democratic rebuttal to Trump address

‘I'm thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s. Trump would have lost us the Cold War,’ says Michigan senator

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